Tag Archives: ebooks

Jul16

Elves Are More Than They Seem in the Gemstone Chronicles

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Starts July 15 and runs through July 19

Starts July 15 and runs through July 19

Welcome to day two of the Magik and Mayhem Blog Tour. I’d also like to welcome everyone that has come to visit from Kboards.com. Today, a fabulous $75 Amazon Gift Card is being featured for those visiting today. Link below to enter the prize. Note: The giveaway will start on July 16, 2013 and run for seven days. This is a special giveaway for Kboards.com members, but anyone visiting may enter. Thanks for stopping by! I’d also like to thank Harvey at Kboards.com for featuring my blog today.

Win a $75 Amazon Gift Card

Now, for a fabulous Middle Grade novel that has an educational twist that includes, what else, an elf! I’ve managed to find the perfect start to the blog tour. The Gemstone Chronicles: The Carnelian is book 1 in the series by William L. Stuart.

Evil and good are out of balance again, and needs to be restored. Aidan and Maggie are visiting their grandparents, helping their grandfather rock hunt, when they discover an odd fairy cross stone. The debate is on what to do with it after seeing a spector appear from it requesting help.

The Gemstone Chronicles Book 1: The Carnelian by William L. Stuart

The Gemstone Chronicles Book 1: The Carnelian by William L. Stuart

The kids can’t help their curiousty, and break the stone open releasing the elf, Findecano. They must help him to find the several gemstones missing from the Elven Bow. Together, they must restore the balance.

I really liked this story since it showed grandparents as elders helping to raise and instill morals and values in their grandchildren. Plus, it showed the children being respectful. There was also great inner struggles with especially Beebop, the grandfather, as he comes to terms with the fact, elves are real. I always love stories that skirt the real world and a fantasy world.

Plus, it starts at the grandparents’ home in the Georgian mountains as the grandkids are visiting for Spring Break. So, I think this is a great book for kids that are visiting their grandparents, and need some activities. There is even a little education in rock hunting stones, and a general sense of respect for others, including elves and trolls. This would be a great start for any visit to grandparents, with two more books that follow in the series. It will keep grandchildren that love fantasy busy for hours.

**** Four Star Rating
The Gemstone Chronicles: The Carnelian is available at Amazon.com in paperback and ebook editions. Also available at Smashwords.com as an ebook edition.

Tomorrow’s post will feature an interview with the author of the Gemstone Chronicles, William L. Stuart.

I’d like to thank Kboards.com Facebook and Blog for featuring the Indie Children’s Authors Connection today.

**Continue your fantastic journey through Magik and Mayhem here! The Magik and Mayhem Blog Tour continues through to July 19.

Mar6

Read an Ebook Week March 3-9 on Smashwords

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Available at Smashwords for 50% this week in celebration of "Read an Ebook Week".

Available at Smashwords for 50% off this week in celebration of “Read an Ebook Week”.

It’s that time of year again. No, not for wearing green, but to head over to Smashwords and pick up those free and hugely discounted ebooks. This is probably the biggest promo that Smashwords does all year round, and it is a great tradition to be a part of. If you are a children’s author and have your books distributed on Smashwords, please leave a comment of where your book can be found. If you’re a fan of ebooks, or just want to see what they are all about, check out the many deals going on this week.

Smashwords has several formats that you can download for an ebook. If you want to pick up some bargains in children’s ebooks, Smashwords is the place to shop this week.

Plus, I’ve just received an official release date for my third book. The Lost Secret of Dragonfire is due for release in May this year. So, both books in the Crystal Keeper Chronicles are 50% in support of Ebook Week. Pick up the first two books in the series at an extra discount, and you’ll be ready for the third book in May.

Happy “Read an Ebook Week”. It’s a great way to celebrate literature in the digital age.

*The Lost Secret of Fairies and The Lost Secret of the Green Man are available this week only at Smashwords for 50% off.

Aug9

Smashwords Offers Library Pricing

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It continues to amaze me how new things come up for Indie Authors. Right now, it’s all about pricing. Whether to have your book priced free in a promo, or set it at price points of $0.99, $1.99, or $2.99. But fresh ground has been broken with Smashwords announcement yesterday of Library Pricing.

According to their blog, Smashwords announced their new program, Library Direct. This new program allows library’s to obtain Indie Books for their ebook check out systems. Several large library networks placed preorders from Colorado and California. It’s will help establish more available books in the ever growing ebook library systems.

Smashwords’s authors received emails about the news, letting them know they can now choose a separate price for libraries. The ability to set a price that is lower or even free for libraries is a great way to promote. Not only can libraries be supported to insure a future for books, it gives a whole new reader base to budding authors.

As with anything new, there are lots of questions. Should a book be listed for free? How will the libraries know which book to buy? How big could this reach?

All I can say is that libraries are hard to break into as a beginning author. With limited funds, libraries rely on book reviews and top seller’s list to choose purchases. Many Indie authors don’t make the NY bestseller’s list. But there is a chance for them to be on the Smashwords Best Seller’s List. And with just a few library systems starting out, I’m sure more will follow. With low priced or free books to choose from, ebook libraries will be larger than any possible brick and mortar library. The shelves would never end.

I am happy to announce that both my books will be available at a lower than retail price for this new library endeavor. It’s a great way to support the future of our library systems and reach a new readership. Plus, it makes me proud to be an Indie Author.

Jun21

The Amazon Price Matching Experiment

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Book 1 sold over 9,000 free copies in over a month.

Sometimes you can find some really good ideas on Writing Boards. Some turn out to be fabulous ideas. Back in Dec. 2011, I noticed some posts on kindleboards.com in the Writer’s Cafe about a back door way of getting your books to go free on Amazon. I’ve heard from another author this is even difficult for traditional publishers to do. Amazon tends to not let books go free. Unless you know the back door.

The key ingredients to start the experiment turned out to be Smashwords and having your book on the Premium Catalog. Other authors tried this with having their book published on the Apple Store as well. I don’t have a directly published edition through Apple, but it is something to be noted. This way was possible as well.

I listed my first book, The Lost Secret of Fairies, as $0.00 on Smashwords. It takes a few weeks for it to set to that price on the other websites like Barnes and Nobles. But I noticed that it went free on the Nook within 2 weeks. Once it hits a big site like Barnes and Nobles, Amazon will often price match it with the Kindle edition. Then the fun really begins.

By the end of January, I’d sold 400 free books of The Lost Secrets of Fairies. Amazon matched it on Jan. 24, 2012. I watched the numbers climb to 1,739 to 2,037 by the next day. I noticed it averaged about 200 free downloads in one hour. As I tracked the numbers, it slowed down to 100 free downloads an hour over the next few days. By the end of January, I had 5,386 free downloads for my first book. The second book in my series, The Lost Secret of the Green Man, had 21 books sold.

February was a fun month. The sales continued with free downloads changing to 100 a day for The Lost Secret of Fairies. Sales of the second book followed. My first book returned to its normal price of $0.99 by March 15. The total free downloads for Feb. included 3,642. There were only 9 refunds in that time. Making the total free downloads for end of January, February, and beg. of March at: 9,894.

To see if all this would benefit my second book sales, I crunched some numbers. There were 21 sales of the Secrets of the Lost Green Man in January. February had 35 paid sales, and March had 24. The grand total of sales was 80. So, for about every 125 free downloads, I had a paid sale for my second book.

The Lost Secret of Fairies became the top in the Free Store for several listings. On Feb. 6, it listed as #1 children’s books/social situations. On Feb. 7 it was #1 children’s books/self esteem and respect. I witnessed it topping out at #110 in the Kindle Free Store around the same time.

After my first book returned back to $0.99, the free bump kept it selling at 2/3 higher than normal. My average sales is about 10 books a month. In March, it was at 64 sales, and for April dropped in sales down to 29.

About the end of March 2012, other authors noticed drops in sales ratings even with free book sales. After a while, people reported back trends on the Writer’s Cafe board that Amazon must have changed their algorithms in regards to free book sales. Free book sales were no longer being counted the same as paid book sales. The ratios seemed to work out to 10 free book sales equaling 1 paid book sale.

For the month of May, things returned to normal. The Lost Secret of Fairies had 12 Kindle Ebook sales while my second book, The Lost Secret of the Green Man, had 9.

What did I learn from this experiment? I’ll benefit from the over 10,000 sales of my first book, free and paid. I have an awesome reader base now. This will help when the third book is ready for release this fall(2012). Plus, for every 60 copies downloaded for my first book, a second book was bought. The Free Download bump raised my sales for two months. I even received 3 new reviews on Amazon, and 4 new reviews for the Nook. They were all positive. In addition, there were fewer refunds than I thought.

The most important thing I walked away with; I have thousands of new readers introduced to my series. That, in itself, is priceless.

Crystal Cluster**The Crystal Keeper Chronicles are available on Amazon.com as paperback or Kindle editions.
Also available on Smashwords.com. and the Nook by Barnes and Nobles.